Ohio's gubernatorial primary is Tuesday, but a moment of truth will come Sunday. Ken Blackwell, darling of the Christian hard right, is counting on his fundies to win in a low-turnout primary over Jim Petro. Petro is bad, but Blackwell is in a class by himself.
This is what someone must do on Sunday: Perhaps Blackwell's most influential supporter is Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church in Columbus. Parsley cannot legally endorse Blackwell from the pulpit, and someone must be present to monitor Parsley to make sure that doesn't happen and raise a stink if he does cross the line.
The reason this is so important is that I'm still kicking myself for something that happened in the 2004 election. The Sunday before the election, my wife and I were getting ready to head somewhere when our neighbor and his father pulled up. They had just come back from their Southern Baptist church and were fired up because Hannity, J.C. Watts and Zell Miller had just delivered what my neighbor's father described as a fire-and-brimstone political vote-for-Bush screed.
My neighbor is a nice person and I didn't want to cause a scene, though I was boiling inside and stewed all day that I hadn't confronted him. Here was a guy pushing 70, and I thought about asking him: `Are you glad you have Social Security? Good, thank the Democrats. Are you glad you have Medicare? Good, thank the Democrats.' But I didn't, for the sake of neighbor harmony.
Later that day, I saw a bumper sticker in a liberal part of Columbus that read, ``Your silence will not protect.'' I turned to my wife and said that bumper summed it up for me. After Kerry lost, I vowed not to repeat that mistake.
Unfortunately, I'll be out of town this weekend, so I can't monitor Parsley. So someone please make sure if crosses the line, we're there to take action.